Salvation
by aka-elsie-snuffin
Summary: Tony/Ziva one shot. What if Tony didn't get on that plane in Past, Present, and Future, and he was around when Ziva found out she was pregnant?


Author's Note: Inspired by a Tumblr post (here). I don't know if this has been done yet but I couldn't get the idea out of my head so I decided to go for it. I'll get back to Colour Me In soon enough. I was actually on Tumblr looking for inspiration for that story when this happened. Feedback please!

Disclaimer: Not my characters, etc. Just fixing what got broken.

* * *

 _When will I feel this as vivid as it truly is,_

 _Fall in love in a single touch,_

 _And fall apart when it hurts too much?_  
 _Can we skip past near-death clichés_

 _Where my heart restarts, as my life replays?_

 _All I want is to flip a switch_

 _Before something breaks that cannot be fixed._

* * *

The October night air has a bite to it that he hadn't expected before the start of his journey. Then again, he hadn't expected to spend months traveling around the Middle East, searching for her. He hadn't packed appropriately. The light jacket he wears was bought in Tel Aviv a few days ago after she caught him shivering as they sat out on the farmhouse porch one night.

Another thing he never expected was that he would be going home without her. He understands why, or at least his head understands. He gets leaving the job behind. He gets wanting to start fresh. Having been her constant observer for years, he had noticed the way the job was wearing her down, how all the death and misery had been weighing on her. There are things in her past, from her time with Mossad that she won't tell him about, because she worries he won't be able to trust her if he knew. No matter what he tells her, these are secrets she feels she must keep and he doesn't push too hard because he respects her.

His heart will never understand how she can leave her family, leave _him_ behind.

They stand on the tarmac and an overwhelming sensation washes over him. It isn't supposed to end this way. He can't stop looking at her, drinking in her delicate face with the dark eyes that he caught watching him from across the bullpen more times than he can remember. She had looked at him almost as much as he looked at her, and not just because their desks were across from each other. He can't grasp the fact that she won't be sitting there anymore, with her questions and teasing and inability to grasp American idioms. This isn't how they are supposed to end.

She tells him that he is so loved, almost choking on the last word. And then they are kissing and he tries to memorize the feel of her lips on his, the silk of her hair between his fingers, the press of her hand on the back of his neck. It's too much and not enough all at the same time, and he doesn't want the kiss to end but it does, and he gazes into her eyes that are filling with tears, and his resolve crumbles.

"I can't get on that plane," he says, his voice husky with emotion.

He can't tell if it is relief or panic that passes across her face. She breathes his name and is unable to get anything else out before one tear slips out and travels down her cheek. "It's too soon," he continues, trying to wrangle his emotions into words. "I just found you, and I can't…" He trails off, unable to finish his sentence. _I can't let go._

Her eyes are unreadable, but she takes his hand and leads him back away from the plane. She might regret this tomorrow or the next day, but she regrets many things so this does not add much weight to the existing pile. She is not ready to let him go either.

* * *

Days turn into weeks and neither of them are willing to let the other go. The longer they are together, the more difficult it becomes. She isn't sure who is more of a masochist between them, strengthening a tie that will be severed soon enough. In the back of her mind is the thought that it does not need to be severed, they do not need to end, but she refuses to let it see the light of day. This changes nothing.

She still needs to repent, to atone for all the pain and suffering she caused to others over the years. Yes, she was following orders, doing her job, and yes, her father had groomed her to be his assassin, but she believes strongly in free will, and she did not have to do these things. She eventually refused and left Mossad, left her father. She could have done this years ago, before she murdered a single person. But she didn't, and for this, she does not deserve happiness. And he makes her happy.

There is no television in the old farmhouse but he does not complain once even though she knows he must miss sports. It is American football season and she tells him of a sports bar in Tel Aviv that she knows shows the games on flat screen tvs but he declines. Maybe this is him changing, like he said he would. Maybe he is afraid of leaving her, that when he returns, she will not be there anymore. She wonders if this is why he sleeps with his arm wrapped so tightly around her at night, to keep her from slipping out into the night and dissipating into thin air.

Instead, he passes the days by reading and learning Hebrew. The old farmhouse contains many books, in Hebrew and English. Some are her father's, philosophy, biographies, and, much to his amusement, mystery novels. Some are books from her childhood. He starts with these, as if they hold the key to understanding the child who Ziva was, before she was corrupted by her father.

She had wanted to be a ballerina, diligently practicing, using the back of a chair as a barre. She had been good, graceful and light on her feet, with good turnout and instinctively knowing what to do with her arms and hands. But then her mother died and her father refused to let her continue with lessons. He had more important things for her to learn, he claimed, like how to shoot a gun.

The books of her childhood represent the innocence that her father had eventually stomped out. In English, she read Beatrix Potter, fairy tales that Tali had obsessed over. Her favorite book had been The Little Prince. This is the book Tony picks up first, and he returns to it regularly, rereading and gathering new meanings from the deceptively simple little book. He had seen the movie with his mother years ago, but he knows he did not fully understand it then.

They spend their days in the olive grove under the trees, out on the covered front porch of the farmhouse, walking around Tel Aviv. They spend a week in Haifa, swimming in the turquoise Mediterranean, still warm even in November. He finds that he can fall even more in love with her there, her slim form sitting on the white sand beach, the smell of saltwater perpetually in her hair and on her skin.

* * *

She doesn't miss her period until she notices how she feels mildly nauseated all day. Clandestinely, she purchases a pregnancy test. This isn't the first time she has done so but it is the first time she knows the answer before the requisite three minutes is up. When it is positive, she purchases more tests, as if she can erase this if she dips enough tests into her urine. They all yield the same result, and she feels herself crumble inside.

In panic and without wanting Tony to know, she creeps out of bed early one morning, looks up the number of a gynecology practice, schedules an early morning appointment later that week. She tells Tony only that she has a doctor's appointment, that it is just a routine check up that she has had scheduled for months. She cannot tell him yet.

The gynecologist has kind eyes and cold hands, and she confirms that Ziva is indeed pregnant. She asks if she is married and she shakes her head. Her eyes fill with tears at the thought that she and Tony had created a life.

She doesn't know how to tell him, so she does it bluntly, not mincing her words. She finds him sitting inside on the couch, reading one of her father's old mystery novels. She sits next to him and takes the worn book out of his hands. "I am pregnant," she says simply.

She hadn't thought about what his reaction would be, she could barely process this turn of events herself. He blinks, searches her face for any sign that she is playing a prank. When he finds nothing but seriousness, he says, just as simply, "Well, now I'm really not leaving."

This isn't what she had planned. He was never supposed to find her, they were never supposed to show each other how they have felt for so long. He was supposed to become another regret in her past, one that would weigh heavily on her heart.

As an unmarried woman, she had the right to ask a committee to terminate the pregnancy. She isn't sure if Tony is aware of that nuance in Israeli law, which differs from the laws surrounding termination in the US, but she knows that, for her, it is not an option, and he never asks her about it.

She tells him that he does not need to feel obligated, that she knows how he has a strong sense of duty but it should not apply here. She says that she can provide for the child, that he can go back to the US whenever he would like.

He stares at her and his eyes, always the barometer of his moods, turn stormy. "No," he tells her. "I am staying because I want to, because I love you. Not because of some sense of duty. Don't you get it? You're my family, and I can't leave you. Or our child."

The truth, so brazenly spoken by this man for whom she would give her life, brings tears to her eyes. They rush to the surface and fall at an alarming rate. He takes her hands in his, squeezes them. And she responds, "Okay."

* * *

The next day, he calls Director Vance and resigns from NCIS. They video chat with Abby, who beckons McGee, Gibbs, Ducky, Palmer. They all gather around the computer as they break the news. The reactions are varied but predictable. Tony owes Ziva five dollars after she wins the bet on who would ask if they had been an item the whole time. She correctly guessed McGee, he thought it would be Abby.

By some stroke of luck, Tony is offered a job teaching ESL classes. He does not have to apply or interview, but the person who calls him lets slip that he knows Orli Elbaz, Mossad director. Neither of them have a clue how Orli knows, but neither are so surprised. He plans his classes gleefully, excited to have underlings. She teasingly reminds him that they are to learn from him, not simply do his bidding. He scoffs at her and waves her away.

They fix up the old farmhouse where no one but ghosts had lived for so many years. They turn Ziva's childhood room into a nursery, pick out baby items together. He carefully researches on the internet for the items they will need, and jokingly suggests superfluous items just to make her laugh.

He goes with her to appointments, holds her hand and makes jokes as the ultrasound technician squirts jelly onto her belly, finds the baby's heartbeat. At 20 weeks, they learn they are having a daughter.

That night, when Tony comes home from teaching, he brings her a surprise. It is a set of wooden letters meant to be hung on the wall of the nursery. And they spell "Tali."

Her eyes fill with tears, and not just because of the pregnancy hormones. She whispers how he knew that was the name she wanted to give their little girl, and he shrugs, throwing her a disarming grin. "What else would we name her?"

* * *

This is not how he expected things to play out, but he isn't complaining. He sleeps every night next to the love of his life and they will soon have a daughter who will fill the old house with youthful joy and the pitter patter of little feet. He realizes that he had it all wrong before when he was trying to convince her to come home with him. Home is not DC. Home is wherever they are, together.

They fight, much as they always have, but they laugh just as much. She realizes that she can start a new life without having to completely shed her old one. And that atonement occurs not by withholding happiness but by embracing it, by loving without worry that it will all be taken away from her. He realizes that the two cups, job and family, can be equally filled, and that the feeling that he had for so long, like something was missing, was this equilibrium.

They will raise a daughter, Tali, surrounded by love, who knows none of the heartaches that clouded both her parents' childhoods. They will live in Israel, in that farmhouse, then move back to DC when they learn that Gibbs is ill. Tali will call him Grandpa Gibbs and he will dote on her, the dark haired, lively daughter of two of his surrogate children. She will have a mischievous streak and be smart as a whip, with a tongue to match. There will be no doubt as to her parentage.

Tali will know her parents' story, the journey of how they got together after years of having each other's backs and found that they were the other's salvation. She will have movie nights with them and will laugh and shush her parents as they playfully argue about something inconsequential. Tony will pass on his wide range of movie trivia to her. She will go to the opera every year with her mother on a specific day, and learn about her namesake, the aunt she will never get to meet.

This is the life they will build together, for their daughter. It will be everything they almost didn't have, if he had only boarded that plane all those years ago. They both saw that moment as one of weakness at the time, but they will learn that it was really a moment of strength, a testament to the partnership, the trust and love they built over the years.

* * *

 _So I let go_

 _And in this moment I can breathe._

End.


End file.
